I landed a job! It took much longer than I expected and it took a lot more work than I thought I was going to have to put in, but I finally did it.
In June of 2019 I found myself in a new job that I did not like at all. Even though the pay was really good, it felt like I was taking steps backwards in my career and I was not enjoying myself. I was in a position where I was responding to a lot of helpdesk tickets and just fixing things that were broken. At a previous job I got to build out a lot of systems and work with some cool tools like Ansible and Docker, but that was no longer the case at this new job. I knew that I liked building things and I knew that I liked working in the text editor, so I decided to quit my job and pursue a career change into software development. I wish I would have done it sooner.
I knew a couple of people who had gone through the Flatiron School Full Stack Software Engineering bootcamp and they had really good success with it, so I decided to take the same route. I had taken a lot of programming courses while I was in college, but I knew I needed to refresh my skills and I was excited to jump into more Ruby and JavaScript. I was very excited to jump into the course and it felt like I was flying through it, because I enjoyed all of the lessons and problems. Every time there was a larger/tougher lesson or project I would get a little nervous that I wouldn’t quite be able to figure it out, but I always would and that was a huge confidence builder for me throughout the course.
I was hoping to finish the course before the holidays so that the job search would be a little easier, and I did… barely. I finished the week before Thanksgiving which didn’t really help me out that much. After the new year I was getting several interviews and I would do well for the most part, but I could never land one. Then Covid hit. Some companies with whom I had been interviewing put a hold on their hiring process and things began to not look so good. The part time job that I had, had ceased operations for about a month so I took advantage of this time to learn some new skills, like learning Python, GraphQL, and implementing MaterialUI.
When companies started hiring again it was a very tough market, because a lot of talented workers had been laid off and now I was competing with a lot of experienced developers for even junior roles. It was tough and incredibly frustrating, but I stuck with it. I kept working on my skills and working on projects that I could show off. Finally, in August, over a year after I had quit my previous job, after writing over 110 cover letters, and applying to many more jobs than that, I landed a job as a Junior React Developer!
This search was by far the toughest time I have ever had looking for a job, and I learned a few things along the way.
Always Be Programming. This is by far the piece of advice that I got the most from people, because employers want to see that you are actively writing code. Not to mention, the only way to get better at something is to practice and that is very true when it comes to writing code. I tried to devote a lot of my time to learning new skills and honing my existing ones. I found a bunch of projects that I could work on that interested me and helped me work with new skills. I built a website that fetched college football data and that allowed me to get better at working with RESTful APIs. I worked on a project that helped me keep track of companies, contacts, and job applications, and that helped me learn to build and consume GraphQL APIs. When you learn something new, go back and try to implement it in your old projects as well. It’s a good exercise to repeat what you have learned and you can also see how much better you have gotten as a programmer a long the way.
If It Looks Fun, Apply For It. There were several jobs that I did not think that I would be at all qualified for, but I thought they looked awesome. Even though I never heard back from a lot of these companies, I did get to interview with some of them, and that gave me a lot of hope and excitement.
It’s A Numbers Game. Apply for a lot of jobs and connect with a lot of people. It is super easy to apply for jobs now, and every posting is going to get a bunch of applicants. Look often for postings and apply to as many as you can, because a lot of postings won’t stay up that long. Also, after messaging a lot of people on LinkedIn, I began to see how connected a lot of programmers are and a lot of people were extremely helpful in giving me some positive feedback.
Take Notes. If you get asked a question in an interview and you miss it that is totally fine, but take notes and study so that you don’t miss it again. Chances are you will be asked the same question multiple times by different companies, so be prepared! I made a website that acted like flashcards for me to prepare for interviews. I made sure that I had questions from a wide variety of topics and whenever I got asked something that I didn’t know, I made sure to add questions on that topic.
Always Be Programming!!! Again, this is the most important thing and I cannot stress enough how helpful this was to me in my pursuit of a new programming job.
This is a very tough time to be looking for a job, especially if you are entering into a new career. There is a ton of good talent out there right now for employers to choose from which means the competition is fierce. To all of the rest of you out there looking for a job right now, be persistent, keep learning, and good luck!